


Ensnare Me

by storieaddict



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: AU Storybrooke, Angst, Captain Swan - Freeform, F/M, Fluff, Jane Eyre crossover
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-29
Updated: 2014-12-29
Packaged: 2018-03-04 04:47:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2952938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storieaddict/pseuds/storieaddict
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Don't worry, you don't have to have read Jane Eyre to understand this fic. I'm a fan of the classics and the great Byronic Hero.  I always think that Emma Swan is really the Jane Eyre of our time: lonely orphaned girl raised by people who don't love her only to discover love/family much later in life.  She falls for a dark and dashing man who breaks conventional ideas of romance to pursue her.  Drama ensues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ensnare Me

Emma had known it was going to be a lousy day from the moment she awoke to the emergency line at the sheriff station rather than to her alarm’s mellow crooning of Gavin DeGraw.  So much for setting herself up for a successful day, she fumbled her way out of her lumpy bed at the Bed and Breakfast and into the shower.

Since dawn she had dealt with a power outage that extended from Gold’s Pawn Shop down to Granny’s diner (cold coffee was not an option), an impressively drunk handy man (brightside: a drunken Leroy could sing the hell out of “Not Over You,” though he kept babbling about some chic named Astrid), another break-in at Gold’s shop (seriously, people in town hated that guy), and now she was trying to track down a lost dog.

“You would think,” Emma grumbled to herself as she trudged along the shoreline, “that a town the size of Storybrooke would have a dog catcher—but no, ‘that’s not in the budget, Miss Swan,’” Emma mimicked the haughty tones of the mayor’s speech when Emma had dared ask how to reach the local animal control. 

Emma was discovering a lot of her duties as sheriff had very little to do with the detective work she was expecting.  As the day’s misadventures had proven, in a town as small as Storybrooke, the sheriff was the person people called for everything. Luckily, in a town as small as Storybrooke, everyone also tended to team up to help each other, so Emma usually had a lot of help.  So, Leroy (between drunken renditions of the top 40) had talked Emma through rigging the power grid until the town electrician could deal with it. Granny had funneled water into Leroy until Emma could maneuver him into the drunk tank (aka, the cell on the left, versus the cell on the right). Gold had been less-cantankerous than usual and had actually given her a list of names to check out (it was an impressively lengthy document). Now a good portion of the town had turned up to help create a search party for Dr. Archie Hopper’s lost dog, Pongo. Most of the town had gone into the woods in search of the canine, but Emma was at the beach.  Archie said the feisty Dalmatian had a serious penchant for rolling in dead fish whenever he made a break for it, so Emma was currently snooping around the smellier portions of the shoreline.

“Emma, any sign of Pongo?” an anxious voice asked from the walkie talkie on her hip.

“Not yet, Kid,” Emma responded, shading her eyes against the setting sun’s glare against the water. Emma scanned the area, keeping her eyes peeled for black and white.  “Ask Archie if there’s anywhere else the dog might have gone.”

A moment of static and then, “He says Pongo usually heads toward the pier,” was the response.

Emma rolled her eyes and took a deep breath of fishy air, turning on her heel to head back toward the pier. The mild-mannered psychologist had absolutely NOT mentioned the pier when he’d first pointed Emma toward the water. “Okay, Henry, I’ll check there, but we’re losing the light.  Tell Archie to go home in case Pongo gets hungry and heads that way.”

After signing off with her son, Emma mused that in all reality it was actually Henry’s fault that she was stalking a dog instead of the latest bail jumper.  Not that she was planning on a whole life change or anything—but damn if that kid hadn’t gotten under her skin with his gigantic brown eyes and floppy hair and his crazy story about needing her help.  Maybe it was just that he needed her or some weird maternal chemical kicking in, but sometimes her heart twisted in her chest when he looked at her.

As the light was fading, a heavy fog was rolling in making already poor visibility exceptionally crappy. Emma passed a few large boats that were nothing but hulking masses in the haze. Only seeing a few feet ahead and being muffled in the blanketing mist gave Emma a maybe-I’m-really-in-a-slasher-movie feeling. The tiny blonde hairs on the back of Emma’s neck lifted as her boots made the old planking squeak.  She reached the end of the dock with no sign of the dog (just lots of dark water and mysterious nautical noises) and shrugged.  This was the end of the line, and the furry perpetrator was definitely not here.

Just as Emma was about to give up and head back to the sheriff’s office and hope one of the other search parties had found something, a flash of black and white streaked by her in the fog smelling strongly of rotting fish.  Blonde hair flying as she ran after the four-legged fiend, Emma tried to run cautiously as she really couldn’t see where she was going, and then she thought she saw a wagging tail ahead of her and pumped her long legs to pick up some speed.

“Got. You. Now,” she puffed as she closed in on the canine.

Without warning, Emma slammed into something.  She had the impression of warmth and height before her back met the planks of the dock with thud that pushed the breath from her lungs. Only vaguely hearing the “ooph” and accompanying splash while trying to draw air into her abused lungs, Emma realized belatedly she had run full force into a man.  A man who, from the fluent and inventive cursing coming from beneath the pier she was lying on, was floundering about in the water in the dark. She had body-checked some poor guy into the ocean.

“Really?” Emma berated herself and shoved her feet under her. Scrabbling to the edge of the dock, Emma could only distinguish the “mansel” in distress as a darker shape slapping at the dark water amid the other dark shapes in the fog.  However, judging by the increased volume of his cursing, his lungs were just fine. “Hey,” Emma called out to him, “Hey, are you alright?”

“What the bloody hell do you think?” he wheezed between waves that crashed over his head. 

Emma winced in sympathy; that water had to be freezing.  She noted however, that this was apparently not the man’s first dunk in the drink as he maneuvered himself quiet efficiently in the water. “I’ll meet you by the ladder,” she called out.

It wasn’t until he reached the ladder, expletives still squeezing out between his clenched teeth, that Emma realized he only had one hand. As Emma reached down to assist the man in climbing up the ladder, he waved at her with his left arm that was capped off with a very menacing silver hook. “Oh no,” he panted as he hauled himself to the decking of the pier, “you just stay the bloody hell away from me.  Bleeding sea witch,” he growled. 

Emma admired his ability to sneer down his nose at her from the floor even as she attempted to regain her composure. “Ease up there, Buddy, it was an accident.” Sure it had totally been her fault, but that didn’t mean she had to admit it.  She felt her features forming the mask that Henry called her “cop face”—the one that allowed her to hide her feelings (like embarrassment) as she pulled out her sheriff’s-office-issue flashlight to assess the damage.

The light showed her his lanky form, decked out in black T-shirt, dark jeans, and a black leather jacket.  Great, with all that dark material it was going to be hard to determine if he was bleeding. She angled the light several ways and ran her hands over his legs, arms, and chest to see if she could determine an injury that way, but all her hands told her was the he was a very cold, muscular man with an impressive set of abs.

“Oy, buy a man a drink first,” he objected during her survey, pushing her hands away.

Emma really had to fight not to roll her eyes, “It’s not personal—“

“—Bet you say that to all the lads,” he sniggered.

“—I’m checking you for injuries,” Emma barked at him, put off by the flirtatious level of his tone.

“No need to worry on that score,” he heaved himself to a sitting position, and his voice liberally tinged with sarcasm. “Aside from the pneumonia I’m sure to contract for swimming at night, I’m just fine.” He started to get to his feet, and lurched roughly to one side cursing a blue streak.

“What’s wrong?” Emma grabbed hold of his arms to steady him.

“My bloody ankle—must have turned it when you barreled into me,” he gritted through his teeth.

“You need to see a doctor,” Emma said firmly, getting her shoulder under his arm.  “Come on, lean on me—my car is parked in the lot over there,” she indicated with a nod of her head. The guilt of injuring an innocent bystander was nearly choking her.  As they stutter-stepped they’re way to the cruiser, she accused, “What were you doing wandering the docks at night.”

“I work here, aboard _The Jolly Roger_. What were _you_ doing wandering the docks at night? You don’t much look like the sea-faring type, lass.” A cocky lift of one dark eyebrow was visible against his pale face.

“Official police business,” Emma went for a touch of bravado, still maintaining a façade, “I’m the new sheriff.”

“Ah, Sheriff Swan, what an honor to be knocked on my arse by a public official,” his drawl was hastily cut off with a grunt of pain as he stepped with his injured leg.

Just then a burst of static came from her walkie talkie, followed by an ecstatic whoop from Henry, “We found him, Emma!  He made it home, just like you said!”

Emma managed to maneuver the man and grab the walkie, “That’s great, Kid.  Listen, I have to drop a man off at the hospital—“

“You’re not taking me to that bloody hospital.  Just take me back to the Bed and Breakfast; I have a room there,” the man grunted as he lowered himself into the passenger seat of the cruiser.

“Hang on a second, Henry,” Emma said into the radio.  “What do you mean you’re not going to the hospital?  You need an Xray or something,” she protested.

“I know the difference between a sprained ankle and a broken leg, Sherriff Swan,” he patronized, shutting the cruiser door in her face. 

Fuming, Emma rounded the hood of the car, “Listen, pal,” Emma used her most authoritative tone as she climbed in the driver’s side, “I’m responsible for your injury which means I’m responsible for you.”  She used one finger to poke him in the chest for emphasis, “You need to get that leg looked at by a doctor.”

He raised that one dark eyebrow again.  Emma could finally get a good look at him in the dome light, and boy was he something to look at. His hair was short, but just long enough that it probably always looked mussed.  The stubble on his chiseled jaw made him look more like a rascal than a bum—and that was hard to pull off for most men. She hadn’t been able to see his eye color in the darkness outside, but his piercing baby blues were currently doing strange things to her blood pressure.

“Fine,” he snapped, breaking the eye contact and leaning petulantly back in the seat, “take me to the Bed and Breakfast and I’ll call Dr. Whale to examine me.”

Emma raised her own eyebrow, “Dr. Victor Whale?  I know I’m new in town, but he didn’t exactly seem like the house-call kind of guy to me,” Emma started the car and pulled onto the road toward Storybrooke.

“Oh, he’ll make a house-call for me,” his voice brimmed with confidence.

“Is he a friend of yours?” Emma asked.

“Not exactly,” he evaded, “but he owes me, so he’ll do it.”


End file.
